Abstract
This cross-country comparison of administrative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Germany and Sweden is aimed at exploring how institutional contexts and administrative cultures have shaped strategies of problem-solving and governance modes during the pandemic, and to what extent the crisis has been used for opportunity management. The article shows that in France, the central government reacted determinedly and hierarchically, with tough containment measures. By contrast, the response in Germany was characterized by an initial bottom-up approach that gave way to remarkable federal unity in the further course of the crisis, followed again by a return to regional variance and local discretion. In Sweden, there was a continuation of ‘normal governance’ and a strategy of relying on voluntary compliance largely based on recommendations and less – as in Germany and France – on a strategy of imposing legally binding regulations. The comparative analysis also reveals that relevant stakeholders in all three countries have used the crisis as an opportunity for changes in the institutional settings and administrative procedures.
Points for practitioners
COVID-19 has shown that national political and administrative standard operating procedures in preparation for crises are, at best, partially helpful. Notwithstanding the fact that dealing with the unpredictable is a necessary part of crisis management, a need to further improve the institutional preparedness for pandemic crises in all three countries examined here has also become clear. This should be done particularly by way of shifting resources to the health and care sectors, strengthening the decentralized management of health emergencies, stocking and/or self-producing protection material, assessing the effects of crisis measures, and opening the scientific discourse to broader arenas of experts.
Keywords
Introduction 1
This article compares the administrative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Germany and Sweden, focusing on the first phase of the pandemic. These three countries represent distinct administrative cultures in Europe; thus, each of them managed the crisis through different trajectories. Whereas Germany and France opted for a strict containment approach, with partial lockdown (Germany) or complete lockdown (France), the Swedish government defended its more liberal strategy of voluntary containment measures and standard precautions, avoiding mass quarantine. The aim of this article is to reveal the administrative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how institutional contexts and administrative cultures have shaped strategies of problem-solving and governance modes during the pandemic. Furthermore, we analyse to what extent the crisis has been used for opportunity management, that is, seizing it as a window of opportunity for further institutional reforms. We begin with the assumption that the country-specific institutional and cultural ‘starting conditions’ will shape the countries’ administrative responses to the crisis, problem-solving strategies and modes of crisis governance. Strategies chosen to mitigate the pandemic are expected to largely depend on institutional features and administrative cultures inherited from and ingrained in the past. These governance strategies (e.g. coercion versus voluntariness; centralized versus decentralized) must therefore be understood in light of these national ‘starting conditions’ and institutional path dependencies. This strand of reasoning is theoretically underpinned by historical institutionalism, according to which answers to newly emerging problems are pre-structured by existing institutional arrangements and historically ingrained patterns of problem solving; thus, it stresses path dependencies as important determinants of institutional choices and developments (see Pierson, 2004; Steinmo et al., 1992).
This conception is also theoretically underpinned by studies on administrative traditions, according to which the cultural patterns of administrative organizations provide clues for understanding organizational transformations and institutional reactions to new challenges (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019; Painter and Peters, 2010). Hence, the scope of policy reactions and governance options in response to new challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can be expected to be limited by institutional and cultural ‘path dependencies’ (Hall and Taylor, 1996 : 941; see also Christensen et al., 2016; Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019; Painter and Peters, 2010).
In comparative public administration, approaches have been developed to deal more systematically with the question of how different administrative organizations deal with major crises, specifically those with transboundary characteristics, such as COVID-19, and which institutional options are chosen to respond to emergency situations (Ansell et al., 2010; Boin, 2009; Boin and Lodge, 2016; Boin and t’Hart, 2010; Christensen et al., 2016). Researchers repeatedly point to crises as being important triggers and accelerators of political learning and institutional reform (Ansell et al., 2010; Boin, 2009; Boin and Lodge, 2016; Boin and t’Hart, 2010; Christensen et al., 2016). At the same time, tying in with the aforementioned lines of theoretical reflection, they underline the influence of national institutional settings and administrative cultures on possible learning reactions (Boin and Lodge, 2016; Christensen et al., 2016). However, questions as to how crises are managed administratively and to what extent they are used as opportunities for setting new political agendas and promoting changes in the institutional system have received less analytical attention. Drawing on the literature on opportunity-related policymaking (see Baumgartner and Jones, 2009; Kingdon, 1995), this article perceives crisis management in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic mega-crisis (Boin et al., 2020) as a political opportunity for relevant actors to achieve changes in the institutional settings they are embedded in, and explores the direction and extent of these changes. The literature on opportunity-related policymaking highlights the importance of power and strategically operating actors as determinants of policy choices and governance solutions in response to external challenges (Kingdon, 1995). In this article, we reflect upon these actor choices in a crisis situation and how they were influenced by institutional contexts and administrative traditions. Our data sources are: publications of national and international organizations, especially in the health sector and in the field of public policy evaluation; national and European statistics; press articles; and publications on governmental and non-governmental websites (see Appendix 1). We refrain, however, from a detailed presentation of case statistics and mortality graphs because, at this stage and based on our study, empirically sound conclusions on the multifaceted causes that explain these figures and, specifically, how administrative and institutional factors have contributed to country differences in ‘case statistics’ are not possible. Time-wise, our article concentrates on the first half of 2020 as the primary research period, that is, the time period from the starting phase of the pandemic management. This regards a phase in which the countries’ cumulative learning about the effectiveness and proportionality of various mitigation and containment strategies was still in its infancy. Against this background, our assumption that the countries’ responses will be largely shaped by their institutional starting conditions and administrative cultures appears even more plausible.
The article proceeds as follows: first, we outline the institutional contexts, administrative cultures and some key elements of the national health systems and capacities that have been crucial factors in managing the pandemic and in putting politicians (more or less) under pressure to act. Thereafter, we analyse the dynamics of events and the problem-solving strategies, including different mitigation and containment approaches, economic rescue legislation, and the lockdown lifting practices in France and Germany. Then, we explain the governance arrangements and coordination mechanisms adopted for mitigating the crisis and scrutinize tensions that have occurred in the multi-level systems. Finally, we discuss the issue of opportunity management, in other words, to what extent the crisis has been used as a window of opportunity, before some conclusions and lessons to be learned are drawn.
Institutional context conditions and preparedness for the pandemic
Following the logic of the comparative case-study method, France, Germany and Sweden were selected for this country comparison as cases that are similar in their basic structural characteristics (economic system, level of economic development, economic power, social composition of the population, democratic political constitution and dominant approval of basic democratic consensus, and membership in the European Union (EU)) but differ significantly in their institutional starting conditions (see George and Bennett, 2005; Lijphart, 1975: 165) and administrative cultures (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019). We assume that these differences might explain their approaches to pandemic crisis management. The countries represent three distinct types of European administrative models, with France belonging to the continental European Napoleonic, Germany to the continental European federal and Sweden to the Nordic type of administrative systems (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019). France can be regarded as a prime example of a unitary-centralized system, with a comprehensive, political culture-rooted acceptance of governmental regulatory authority and a powerful bureaucracy, characterized by a strong centre that controls the extensive apparatus of deconcentrated state authorities at regional and departmental level via central government-appointed prefects. The subnational and local levels are functionally subordinate to this, though they have been upgraded and strengthened since decentralization reforms from the 1980s onwards (Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019). Germany and Sweden, by contrast, are well known for their highly decentralized administrative systems and the strong position of local governments. Germany stands out for its federal structure, with the Länder having legislatures, executives and judiciaries of their own. The federal government is limited to policymaking functions, whereas the execution of laws largely falls to the Länder and local governments (Kuhlmann et al., forthcoming). The Swedish administrative model is characterized by an extraordinarily high degree of local autonomy, a large scope of functional responsibilities falling on local governments (including social and health services) and a lean organizational structure of central government ministries. As a peculiarity of the Swedish state organization, the higher state authorities traditionally enjoy a high degree of discretion vis-a-vis the central government, as well as the Parliament (see Petersson, 1994: 100), which, in the case of the COVID-19 crisis, was specifically relevant for the Public Health Authority.
In a European comparison of health capacities, the French and especially the German health systems appeared to be particularly well prepared for the COVID-19 crisis, while the Swedish system – despite the fact that spending on health is similar to that in France and Germany and, overall, is significantly higher than the European average – appeared to be less well equipped, though it has never been overburdened during the current crisis (in contrast to some hotspots in France, as well as in Italy, Spain, the US, etc.). This becomes particularly obvious in view of the number of intensive care beds or units (ICUs) (see Table 1).
National health capacity in France, Germany and Sweden.
Sources: Bouckaert et al. (2020), European Commission (2019), OECD (2018: 133, 135, 187), Rhodes et al. (2012: 1650) and WHO and EU (2020).
The French health system, irrespective of its good preparedness, quickly reached its limits, while in Germany, the system overload predicted by experts did not occur at all and many (newly created) ICUs remained unused. In Sweden too, regions throughout the country increased their capacities of intensive care beds and postponed planned operations but the increased capacities were never fully used.
Dynamics of events and problem-solving strategies
When comparing the dynamic of events, we can observe different processes and strategies of problem-solving in the three countries. In France and Germany, a pattern of stop and go, a strategy of ruptures and reversals, a full stop and restart, and strong support by the population at the beginning marked the process of problem-solving. Furthermore, in France, a significantly shrinking agreement over the course of the crisis occurred; in Germany, declining support for some containment measures was to be observed too, though later in the crisis and to a lesser degree. The Swedish governance strategy was marked by more cautiousness, thoughtfulness and continuity in coping with the pandemic threat, as well as more stable and even increasing support for the containment strategy over time (MSB, 2020). The high trust levels in Sweden regarding the relation between citizens and public authorities provide an important explanation for the fact that compliance was predominantly assured by recommendations. In Germany and France, state and society are regarded as more separate spheres marked by hierarchic subordination instead of ‘contact’ or ‘trust culture’ (see Kuhlmann and Wollmann, 2019). Thus, enforcement by way of legally binding decisions, executive orders and decrees, at times tending towards rather authoritarian measures, many associated with sanctions, penalties and monetary fines, were regarded as essential to push citizens towards compliance. In Sweden, from the very beginning of the pandemic, some of the most repeated and profound recommendations of the Swedish Health Agency have been to wash hands frequently and carefully, to keep physical distance, for people older than 70 to avoid crowds, to not visit elderly relatives and friends, to stay home in case of illness, and to travel only if necessary. These recommendations were based on the Swedish Diseases Act (Smittskyddslag 2004: 168) and everybody was requested to comply. 2 When not following the Health Agency’s recommendations, in unlikely and hardly provable cases, such as deliberately spreading a dangerous virus, legal punishment was however possible based on the Swedish Penal Code. Besides the Health Agency’s recommendations, there have also been a few government decisions to prevent the spread. These decisions banned gatherings of more than 50 people, closed borders for non-European Economic Area (EEA) residents and closed higher education on campuses. However, the compulsory and pre-schools were kept open. Interestingly, even before the Health Agency’s recommendation to ban visits to care homes was declared in Sweden, many municipalities had already enacted measures regarding care homes in their territories because these fall into their local self-government responsibilities. This localized bottom-up approach initiated by local governments to mitigate the pandemic in their jurisdictions largely corresponded to its German equivalent (at least in the initial and final phase of the pandemic before and after the German Länder had passed executive orders for the whole state territory).
Although the Swedish Health Agency never had any regional differences in its recommendations and the municipalities also strongly complied with these recommendations, local/regional variance in pandemic mitigation policies was possible because municipalities had discretion to adopt concrete measures (e.g. visiting bans on care homes), which they did even before the Health Agency’s recommendations were published. In Germany too, the German Länder, at some point, and even municipalities differed in their pandemic containment approaches, with some of them pursuing stricter and some of them looser approaches (see later). Most likely, these differences can be explained by regional variations in the pandemic outbreak, actor constellations and political preferences – an assumption that merits more in-depth investigation, however. In France, by contrast, there has been a more uniform handling based on the central government’s predominance in managing the crisis, regionally supported by the prefects.
The logics of problem-solving in France and Germany contrast with their Swedish counterpart not only regarding the degree of legal obligation and enforcement, but also with respect to the scope and severity of containment measures. In the cases of France and Germany, temporarily, almost all fundamental rights and civil liberties were suspended. Sweden, by contrast, refrained from a general lockdown and never prevented its citizens from free movement in their local environment, pursuing their businesses or continuing their primary education. Specifically regarding the right to free movement, the Swedish government lacked a general legal basis to suspend it, which did not apply to Germany and France. Sweden has also not had an entry ban for EEA and Swiss citizens. Against this backdrop, Sweden represents an ‘outsider’ and ‘exceptional case’ in Europe because of its fairly liberal and laissez-faire approach, though a clear majority of citizens supports this strategy and complies with the recommendations of the Public Health Agency (MSB, 2020). However, when the amount of COVID-19-registered deaths of elderly (80+) rose to high absolute numbers, especially in relation to Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, the opposition began to criticize the government in mid-April. The ‘betrayal of the weak elderly’ and the workload of the people employed in elderly care and intensive healthcare have been two strands in this political debate.
France represents the other extreme, with a rather strict and full lockdown, lasting from 24 March, when the President of the Republic declared the ‘state of sanitary emergency’ based on the Law on Emergency in the Context of the Fight against the COVID-19 Epidemic, until 11 May. During this period of extensive lockdown, French people were only allowed to leave their own homes for journeys to and from work (a certificate from their employer had to be carried) and for a maximum of one hour a day within a radius of one kilometre (a self-declaration had to be carried). Germany can be ranked between Sweden and France regarding the severity of containment measures as the Länder and federal government opted for a limited lockdown based on intergovernmental agreements adopted on 16 and 22 March and executed by the Länder. Unlike France, German citizens were still allowed to leave their homes without certificates; however, according to the so-called ‘contact ban’, physical distancing became legally binding nationwide. People were obliged to keep a minimum distance of 1.5 meters apart and forbidden to appear in groups of more than two (except for families or domestic partnerships). However, in some Länder, more restrictive solutions were chosen. Furthermore, all Länder enacted executive orders to close schools and kindergartens, as well as shops, bars, restaurants and other customer-related businesses. In Germany, local governments, in executing their local self-government responsibilities, were the first to enact pandemic mitigation measures. Thus, a number of German cities and counties passed executive orders on school closures, shutdowns, contact bans and mask obligations even before the Länder and federal government decided to do so, which resembles the Swedish approach and stands in contrast with the centralized French model.
Locking down the economy and social life simultaneously creates a need for equally important decisions linked to how society should be reopened. Both France and Germany have chosen to lift the lockdown gradually, with some of the German Länder taking faster and more courageous steps than France, which was more cautious, slow and hesitant to ease the containment measures. It also became increasingly difficult in Germany to organize a coordinated and harmonized exit strategy as some Länder governments were in favour of proceeding faster while others were more cautious and hesitant. Against this background, there was increasing variance and diversity of exit strategies. In Sweden, by contrast, these debates and decisions were not necessary; thus, the problem-solving strategy of the country stands out for its continuity and sustainability over time. This also applies to the obligation to wear facemasks on public transport and in other facilities that – as part of the exit strategy – became compulsory in Germany and France from April onwards as a counterbalance to the lifting of containment measures. Sweden and all other Scandinavian countries have refrained from any mask obligation during this pandemic period, pointing to the lack of evidence of its effectiveness in pandemic mitigation.
Governance, coordination and policy advice
From a public administration perspective, governance structures and coordination mechanisms are key to explaining how actors cope with major crises. Institutional rules, the allocation of tasks and competencies across levels and sectors of government, and the discretion of involved administrative units largely impact on the dynamics and outcomes of crisis management. Important aspects in this regard are the degree of centralization and decentralization, on the one hand, and the autonomy of levels and/or agencies, on the other. However, institutional contexts and administrative conditions do not completely determine policy decisions and actors’ choices. Instead, they provide corridors for action and might be used by political actors as frameworks for advocating specific solutions to challenges (Kingdon, 1995; see also Mayntz and Scharpf, 1995). Our analysis of France, Germany and Sweden shows that within centralized crisis management structures (France), governments can intervene more directly to push for countrywide uniform mitigation measures to be centrally imposed and controlled; thus, a more centralized governance strategy is typical. By contrast, the decentralized settings (Germany and Sweden) show less streamlined solutions and are (at least partially) based on governance strategies of voluntary compliance by local and regional actors, often linked up to negotiations and coordinative efforts with other levels and resulting in less coherent solutions. Another important feature is the role of specialized agencies and organizations providing professional expertise to politics and handling specific technical and logistical problems. Here, our analysis reveals that although advisory agencies and expert institutions have been involved in pandemic management in all three countries, they largely differed with regard to their institutional position, degree of autonomy and direction of advice provided to policymakers.
France represents a prime example of a centrally driven, uniform governance strategy to cope with the crisis. The central government, the president, the national defence committee at the president’s office, ad hoc appointed external advisory boards and a standing internal crisis management unit in the national health ministry (‘CORRUSS’) are the key actors of pandemic management. The Minister of Health can enforce containment measures by way of direct instructions to state authorities at subnational levels (e.g. the regional health agencies and prefects) and also, though more indirectly, vis-a-vis local authorities. These powers were even significantly extended in the course of the COVID-19 crisis with the new Law on Emergency in the Context of the Fight Against the COVID-19 Epidemic of 23 March, which empowers the central government to declare a health emergency and, on this basis, to enact all regulations of public and economic life related to the crisis by way of emergency decrees adopted by the cabinet without parliamentary approval. In general, a remarkable unity, if not indivisibility, of administrative actors is characteristic of the French case, particularly in the initial phase of the pandemic. Numerous containment measures could be implemented quite smoothly and top-down within only short periods of time. Strict subordination and clear chains of command ranging from the lead ministries down to the mayors as local Agents d’Etat guaranteed the straightforward, uniform execution of national containment policies. In policy advice regarding epidemiological and health-related issues, the leading role was assumed by two interdisciplinary external expert bodies created ad hoc in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic: the Conseil Scientifique COVID-19 and the Comité d’Analyse, Recherche et Expertise (CARE). Interestingly, these two bodies enjoy a higher status and influence on decision-making than various internal expert bodies and committees inside the government apparatus with long-standing expertise in the field of public health.
Based on the highly decentralized and fragmented structure of the German politico-administrative system, a salient feature of the governance strategy to fight the COVID-19 crisis was the limited power of the federal level to enact measures and impose restrictions on the whole country, and the predominance of subnational (horizontally coordinated) crisis management. In times of peace, only the Länder governments legally have the right to impose containment measures and execute them at their own discretion. Within the administrative federalism, the federal law on infection protection (IfSG) is executed by the Länder, which have the right to impose restrictions on their populations in case of specific risk situations. The federal government can only give recommendations to the Länder and push for coordinated measures; it is not in the position to impose them on the Länder. To achieve nationwide solutions and uniform standards, the horizontal self-coordination of the 16 Länder plus the vertical involvement of the federal level are necessary and were extensively practised. Solutions were developed and implemented, first, at the lower levels of government, before they were upscaled and harmonized to finally be rolled out by all 16 states (in agreement with the federation). Whereas much variation occurred among the German Länder regarding the detailed regulation of lockdowns, shutdowns and school closures in the initial and final phases of the pandemic, at the peak of the pandemic (March/April), a fairly high degree of harmonization was reached and nationwide joint regulations were agreed upon between all Länder and the federal government.
German governments at different levels relied on internal and external policy advice. The former was provided by the federal authority for disease monitoring and prevention (the Robert Koch Institute (RKI)). As the RKI is a higher federal authority (Bundesoberbehörde) and directly subordinated to the Federal Ministry of Health, it enjoys less autonomy and discretion than the Swedish National Public Health Agency. This internal policy advice was combined with external expertise, specifically by a well-known virologist from the Charité Berlin.
Sweden stands out from many other countries for its strategy of refraining from severe legally binding containment measures. Lacking a general legal basis to restrict or suspend the fundamental right to free movement, the predominant approach was to rely on recommendations and voluntary citizen compliance rather than on enforcement and legally binding decisions, based on a high level of trust in public authorities and a culture of voluntary compliance with authorities’ advice. This applies, on the one hand, to the quasi-autonomous state agencies, which are positioned beneath the small-scale ministries and responsible for the execution of central-state administrative tasks but, in formal terms, are not subject to the ministry’s directives. By contrast, the German RKI is directly subordinated to the Ministry of Health. The Swedish Public Health Agency has played a predominant role in pandemic policy advice because the government has chosen to follow its recommendations regarding the implementation of the Diseases Act (Smittskyddslag 2004: 168). Although the agency’s recommendations do not have the status of law, they are the most powerful action it can take and citizens are expected to comply. That is why, in practice, the impact of these recommendations came quite close to a legal provision. Based on these recommendations, the government made some decisions, such as prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people, banning visits in care homes and shutting down universities and upper-secondary schools, which required an amendment of the pertinent law due to the fact that the municipalities are responsible for these schools. In general, the Swedish mitigation measures were taken very carefully and cautiously, and the enforcement of bans was used only very sparingly.
In France the top-down strategy for managing a crisis is typical and reflects the historically ingrained tradition of executive centralism. However, to some extent, a pattern of uniform decision-making also became apparent in Germany when, in the middle of the pandemic (March/April), all decisions were coordinated and negotiated at the central level (between the Länder and the federal government) to reach nationwide standards and make all subnational actors comply with these centrally agreed solutions. In Sweden, by contrast, the strategy of ‘soft coordination’ based on ‘soft and informal instruments’ and voluntariness (see Pierre, 2020: 483) remained predominant in crisis mitigation throughout the pandemic, some few binding decisions notwithstanding. In Germany and Sweden, the local governments assumed a major role in subnational crisis mitigation based on extensive self-administration powers and local problem-solving capacities, specifically regarding local health authorities. In both countries, these authorities have proved to be essential institutional assets in crisis management, though, in some areas, they tended to be overburdened due to the sheer number of cases and lacking medical staff. In France, by contrast, the crisis contributed to a (temporary) surge in centralization. Key players in crisis management at the local level were state institutions, in particular, the regional health agencies of the state and the prefects.
In all three countries, expert knowledge was used not only as professional advice to underpin governments’ responses to the crisis, but also to create legitimacy regarding the decisions and measures taken. In Sweden, another important source of legitimacy was the comparatively higher level of trust in public authorities and citizens’ confidence in their recommendations. Whereas there was a predominance of ad hoc created external advisory councils in France, in Germany and Sweden, internal expert bodies directly affiliated to the central governments were given the priority in policy advice during the COVID-19 crisis, with the Swedish Public Health Agency being more independent from central government and politics than the German RKI. Interestingly, expertise was largely centralized in all three countries, their different institutional starting conditions notwithstanding, and the recommendations of these expert bodies were largely followed by governments at various levels. However, whereas the main decisions in Sweden were delegated to professional expertise while the politicians were in the back seat, this relationship played out differently in Germany and France, where (executive) politics was fairly present, visible and powerful. In contrast to France, where the central government took binding decisions on containment measures based on the external experts’ recommendations, in Germany and Sweden, central governments basically confined themselves to making recommendations, while refraining from enforcement. Yet, based on centrally agreed resolutions, in Germany, the Länder and local governments enacted legally binding ordinances and regulations, while Sweden basically did without (except for some few cases). As a common feature in all three countries, complaints were increasingly raised against an overly technocratic and narrowly science-oriented approach, criticizing a ‘republic of experts’ (‘République des experts’) (Le Monde, 2020) or the fact that ‘the virologists govern’ (FAZ, 2020).
Opportunity management
One of the key questions of this Special Issue is whether and how political and administrative actors of distinctly different administrative traditions and cultures have ‘used’ the COVID-19 crisis as a window of opportunity to facilitate, accelerate or prevent changes in institutional settings and policies (see Kuhlmann et al., this issue). Such a strategic or incremental ‘usage’ of the crisis to obtain predefined goals or implement existing solutions that are waiting to be put into practice is labelled here as ‘opportunity management’.
Our country studies have revealed that opportunity management was not primarily the result of evidence-based assessments or systematic crisis analyses, but reflects policymakers’ ad hoc attempts to strengthen their institutional position, to shift powers in the multilevel system and/or to gain additional influence. One example is the amendment of the German infection protection law that pushed towards more centralization and a strengthening of the federal level, specifically the Ministry of Health and the RKI. The federal government successfully seized the opportunity to remedy the – from its perspective – overly decentralized pandemic management setting by enacting a new law on ‘the protection of the population in the event of an epidemic emergency of national concern’, which entered into force on 27 March. Based on this new law, the German Bundestag can declare (and stop) an ‘epidemic emergency of national concern’. Within this state of emergency, the Minister of Health gains considerable additional powers and discretion to unilaterally decide measures and to issue orders in the (otherwise decentralized) pandemic management system, without consulting the Länder and their parliamentary chamber (Bundesrat).
In France, backed by the state president, the central government used the crisis to extend its discretion for decision-making and intervention regarding national infection control. Yet, in contrast to Germany, there was no vertical reshuffling of competencies between levels. Rather, on the one hand, there was a strengthening of the central government’s deconcentrated organizations on the regional and departmental levels (Agences régionales de santé and préfets) (Acteurspublics, 2020). On the other hand, an adjustment of horizontal checks and balances took place regarding the relation between the (already powerful) executive and the (rather weak) legislative, resulting in a clear disadvantage of the latter. Based on the new Law on Emergency in the Context of the Fight against the COVID-19 Epidemic of 23 March 2020, the central government now has the power, once a state of health emergency is declared, to take all crisis-related decisions by way of emergency decrees to be adopted by the ministerial cabinet only.
Some moderate centralizing efforts have also become apparent in Sweden, though with significantly limited impacts on the overall system. Thus, the government’s decision-making capacities were meant to be sped up by a new law on school closures that empowered the central government to close primary schools, upper-secondary schools and kindergartens, which normally fall under local self-government responsibilities. In addition, a temporary law (restricted to a three-month period) was enacted that allows the government to take more severe containment measures if the pandemic situation deteriorates. However, in contrast to France and Germany, countrywide containment policies are still subject to parliamentary approval.
Policymakers seized the opportunity not only to reshuffle powers in the institutional macro-setting, but also to push administrative modernization, specifically the digitalization of public administration. In all three countries, the crisis forced public servants and citizens to suddenly shift from analogue techniques and physical contacts to digital tools and physical distancing. Whereas many public authorities were rather ill-prepared for these new circumstances in Germany because the country is largely lagging behind in terms of digital transformation (see Kuhlmann and Bogumil, forthcoming), Swedish and (to a lesser extent) French authorities appeared to be better off digitally due to previous successful reform efforts (see European Commission, 2020). Particularly in France and Germany, though less pronounced in Sweden, governments took the opportunity of reinforcing their investments into the digitalization of public administration and thus seizing the crisis to advance (ongoing or new) modernization efforts. In Sweden, for example, the 1177 Vårdguiden – a national web- and phone-based health service with e-health (since 2013) and the establishment of online doctors – mitigated the effects on the health system. In Germany, the economic stimulus package adopted by the coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) on 3 June allocated about €4.3 billion Euro to the digitalization of public administration, including €3 billion allotted just to the introduction of local e-services. In France too, the government used the crisis for a ‘digital mobilization’ by launching an innovation programme in mid-March specifically aimed at supporting start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for the ‘digital switchover’ through granting regulatory relief for digital business, tax deferrals and financial aids of €250 million (Gouvernement, economie.gouv.fr, 2020).
Conclusions and lessons learned
It seems too early to draw reliable conclusions about the impacts of different containment strategies (lockdown or non-lockdown) and governance arrangements (decentralized or centralized) on public health, society and economy, which would presuppose more systematic evaluations that also take additional variables such as socio-demographic factors, economic circumstances and possible regional contingencies into account. However, from our findings, some early lessons can be derived to be considered by decision-makers for future pandemic management.
Our analysis shows that the three countries under scrutiny responded quite differently to the similar challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These differences refer, on the one hand, to major strategies of problem-solving, with France pursuing the strictest approach of containment and Sweden the most liberal strategy, whereas Germany, with its limited lockdown and contact-ban policy, ranks between these two models. In France and Germany, there was a broad consensus among all leading specialists and politicians that only with the help of more or less drastic containment measures would the pandemic be manageable and a breakdown of the health system be avoided. However, Swedish experts took a different stance on the problem and refrained from shutting down society and economy, and instead largely relied on the voluntary compliance of the population.
Particularly in the first phase of the pandemic crisis analysed here, countries’ governance strategies were strongly related and limited to the perspectives of the nation states, without systematically mobilizing trans-European, cross-border coordination and collaboration. The strategies represent prime examples of a ‘European coronationalism’ (Bouckaert et al., 2020), within which individual states decided their crisis mitigation strategies unilaterally and in isolation from each other. Neither did they take advantage of existing collaborative frames and horizontal learning mechanisms, and nor did the EU play a noticeable role in guiding and framing national responses to the pandemic. However, this re-emphasis of the national level and unilateral decision-making did not prevent a European-wide policy convergence regarding some basic containment measures (lockdown, shutdown), which we assume were triggered by mimesis, policy diffusion and (national) political power-seeking, rather than by learning, knowledge sharing and evidence-based policy transfer. Again, the Swedish case represents a particularly interesting example here since – for a number of reasons (see later) – it stuck to its deviant national approach and eluded these converging pressures.
Overall, our study shows that the different crisis responses in the three countries were, on the one hand, in line with their state traditions and administrative cultures, specifically regarding the more trust-based versus the more authoritarian relation between governments and citizens, as well as the more centralized versus the more decentralized mode of governance. These historically shaped features have largely influenced the concrete mode of pandemic governance and thus constitute path dependencies that limit the corridor for possible institutional responses. While functioning in a fairly decentralized way in non-crisis periods, France fast and quietly fell back into its traditional Napoleonic-centralist (pre-decentralization) top-down governance mode – a reaction that was well known from other recent crises, such as the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall in 2015. Germany and Sweden, by contrast, continued to rely on their well-proven bottom-up logic of decentralized governance (see Bouckaert et al., 2020), which was also marked by intense coordination between the Länder and the federal government in the German case, reflecting the typical feature of ‘unitary federalism’.
On the other hand, cultural and institutional contexts do not sufficiently explain the responses to the pandemic, as revealed by the conspicuously divergent containment policies pursued in Sweden and its neighbouring countries (Denmark, Finland and Norway), which also belong to the Nordic administrative culture but preferred distinctly different approaches. Hence, further explanatory factors, such as the crisis political orientations of powerful actors, must be taken into account. In Sweden, for instance, politics appeared to be in the back seat rather than dominating the scene and very much relied on the views of leading experts, whose advice on the appropriate handling of public health in the pandemic was unreservedly trusted. In addition, policy advice was fairly decoupled from the political process, and direct political intervention into the Health Agency’s work is legally excluded. By contrast, in France and Germany, where experts’ advice also played a major role, politicians were much more active and visible as crisis managers, and policy advice seemed to be more intertwined with politics; in Germany, direct interventions by the ministry into the Health Agency’s work are also possible at any time. Moreover, the views of leading experts regarding the appropriateness, effectiveness and proportionality of pandemic mitigation measures differed markedly between Sweden, on the one hand, and France and Germany, on the other. Therefore, the political handling and use of advice, as well as the content of advice, provide further explanations for the diverging responses to the crisis.
Regarding policy advice, in Germany and Sweden, internal expert bodies directly affiliated to the central governments (the RKI and Public Health Agency, respectively) were most influential. Again mirroring traditional institutional imprints, the latter represents a prime example of an impartial quasi-autonomous agency – a feature of Swedish administrative culture that dates back to the 19th century. In France, by contrast, the main emphasis was given to two external ad hoc expert bodies set up under the emergency legislation in March, which is a typical feature of policy advice in France, where the President of the Republic frequently commissions external experts and well-known personalities to investigate public issues and to report on them. Governments in all three countries and at various levels based their decisions largely on the recommendations of these expert bodies, which reflects the position and influence of scientific advice in COVID-19 responses, though with a more pluralistic and multidisciplinary composition of these councils in France than in Germany and Sweden.
We have learned from the pandemic situation that the lack of knowledge about the danger ahead and the effectiveness of measures to be taken increases tensions between politicians and experts. While politicians are forced to take decisions and show decisiveness, experts’ advice often tends to be uncertain, controversial and contested as knowledge grows and initial assessments might change (Van Dooren and Noordegraaf, 2020). Against this background, it seems all the more important to involve the broadest and most pluralistic scientific expertise possible to ensure effective and proportionate political decisions, which has not been the case in, for instance, Germany, as contrasted to France. On a more general level – without deriving this conclusion directly from our analysis – it can be assumed that, especially for the assessment of ‘risk–risk trade-offs’ (see also Collins et al., 2020), it seems sensible to consult additional expertise besides virologists and epidemiologists in order to consider multiple unintended (second-round) consequences of the crisis management measures themselves, specifically those resulting from high-stakes emergency decisions. These effects must be taken into account ex ante and in ongoing processes in order to relate them to first-round effects and to facilitate early feedback mechanisms and in-time readjustments of (potentially disproportionate) mitigation strategies (see Collins et al., 2020).
Finally, our country comparison has revealed how national actors seized the crisis as a window of opportunity to get support for changes in the institutional settings and/or to achieve policy shifts that would not or hardly have been feasible in a non-crisis period. Yet, using the crisis as an opportunity for political and institutional adjustments largely fits into familiar reform paths and patterns, and was not radical or disruptive. Thus, in France, the crisis was used for some centralizing approaches in the institutional settings, which contributed to a further strengthening of the already powerful central executive vis-a-vis the legislature. In Germany, by contrast, the federalized and decentralized system of crisis management generally sustained its strong position in spite of the centralizing ambitions of the Minister of Health. The same applies to Sweden, where a significant centralization actually did not happen in practice, some minor and time-limited legislative amendments notwithstanding.
To sum up, there is not one best way of managing a pandemic. Decentralization, subnational discretion and federal variance did not turn out to be hurdles or limitations, as sometimes assumed in the crisis management literature. On the contrary, the decentralized responsibilities in pandemic management and the high agility, flexibility and reactivity of the local public health services (Sweden and Germany), in combination with a well-equipped hospital sector, were supporting factors for pandemic management, though fatal problems occurred in Sweden with regard to care homes. In Sweden, in addition, the deeply rooted trust culture vis-a-vis public authorities facilitated the voluntary approach, which might not work in other national contexts.
So far, reliable evidence about the outcomes of various national approaches towards pandemic management is still lacking. It remains an important task of future research to elaborate on the question of how the ‘outcomes’ of pandemic crisis management can actually be conceptualized and measured, also from a comparative perspective. Such concepts should not only concentrate on health-related indicators and mere case numbers, but also take a more comprehensive perspective by way of including societal, economic and political aspects, as well as the second-round effects and risk–risk trade-offs of crisis management. Furthermore, empirical insights are needed into the question as to whether and why outcomes might differ across countries and regions, and under which circumstances distinctly different institutional approaches (e.g. centralized or decentralized) and measures (e.g. lockdown or non-lockdown) lead to similar outcomes in pandemic management.
